The quality of relationship is strengthened when you walk together with another person through life-changing experience. To have a shared identity built on mutual circumstance is to establish a bond that cannot easily be broken. That's why friends who haven't seen each other in years are suddenly drawn closer in reunion by two small words..."remember when?". That's why memories dulled by years of disuse are once more recalled when a certain song is played, an old hangout is revisited, or a dusty old letter is uncovered in the bottom of an attic chest. A pathway of life has been shared and the results are brought to the surface, reminding you of something special you once shared.
Baptism is such an experience for the believer. It is a celebration of relationship shared with the eternal God through the Savior, Jesus Christ. To step into the water is to die to self, even as Jesus died for you. To be immersed in baptismal waters is to be buried with Jesus, and to to come up from those waters is to rise to new life, even as Jesus came forth from the tomb to bring new life for all who would believe. The apostle Paul, reminding young Christians that this shared identity inspired a different way of living, wrote, "...don’t you know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried together with him through baptism into his death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too can walk in newness of life." This experience we share with Jesus Christ empowers us to a different way of living. We are not to be overcome by sin, but we are to be overcomers because of the relationship we share with Jesus Christ. The New Century Version translates Paul's words in Romans 8:37, "...in all these things we are completely victorious through God who showed his love for us."
As you read today's scripture lesson, recall your own baptism...remember the journey you began there with Christ. There you joined him in death, burial, and resurrection...there your life was forever changed through a shared experience with the living Christ.
Jim Abernathy
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